Fall of Night The Morganville Vampires - By Rachel Caine Page 0,46
it was Michael telling me to wait, I couldn’t do it. I’m just not that strong. Or that patient.’
‘You forgave Shane awfully fast,’ Claire said. ‘Both of you.’
Michael shrugged. ‘I lied to him, and he’s hardwired to trust me, from all the time we’ve spent together growing up. So I don’t blame him for believing me. I hear I was pretty convincing.’ He looked grim about that, and she knew it still hurt like a raw open wound inside him. He’d been controlled by another vampire, made to push away those who loved him, like Eve and Shane and Claire. He’d done it in one bold move, just by kissing Claire and telling them all he’d been doing it for a while.
They’d believed him. For a while.
But they hadn’t believed Claire.
‘I still owe you,’ he told her quietly. ‘Believe me, I haven’t forgotten.’
‘Better not,’ she said, but she smiled as she said it. ‘I’m not still mad, Michael.’
‘I know. But it doesn’t matter whether you are, or aren’t. I still owe you.’
She left it at that, because he wasn’t going to yield, and moved the conversation on to other things. Eve had been invited to join an exclusive Morganville club of the wealthiest ladies in town, all of whom were snobs; she’d turned it down (although she had considered joining just to cause them grief). Then she’d accepted an invite from the vampires to join some kind of tea association. ‘I figure that if the living dead have any kind of blue-haired old ladies, it would be the tea association,’ Eve said. ‘They’re too polite to be rude to me to my face. So, that’ll be fun. I’ll just pretend not to understand when they’re all subtle about their dissing.’
‘And she’s going to be on her best behaviour,’ Michael said. Eve mouthed silently, not likely, and Claire covered her smile with her hand. ‘Listen, I know it’s late, so you get to bed. Anything you want me to tell Shane …?’
‘Are you really going to tell him all the sexy romantic things I want to say?’
‘Not hardly.’
‘Then just tell him to call me when he can,’ she said. ‘Or text. If he can get his big fingers on the tiny little keys.’
She needed a hug, but she settled for extravagant air kisses from Eve, and a movie-star fond smile from Michael, and then she logged off to face the empty, cold house that had less personality than a broom closet in what she still thought of as home: the Glass House.
Still not sleepy, Claire unpacked some posters, unrolled them, and pinned them up on the walls. One was a gift from her parents, a poster of Hawkeye from the Avengers movie, because they knew she thought he was cute, and she wanted that bow and arrow, badly. A couple of her favourite band posters. Another movie one-sheet, this one from The Hunger Games. Katniss was cool, and again, she coveted the bow and arrows. Definitely of use in her normal life. Well, life before MIT …
She froze in the act of pushing the thumbtacks in on that one, because she heard the downstairs door rattle. Then, a knock.
Claire slipped down the steps, careful to walk on the edges near the banister to avoid creaks, and risked a quick peek out through the peephole. She expected loathsome Derrick, but what she saw surprised her – a group of people, boys and girls, talking among themselves.
And in the front of the group was Nick, who’d walked her home.
She unlocked and swung the door open. ‘Hey, Nick,’ she said. ‘Guys.’
Most of them smiled at her. A few were too deep in their own things to bother. Nick’s smile was especially bright.
‘Hi, Claire. Look, I’m sorry to bother you, but we were on our way to crack some books at the coffee shop. You like coffee? And books? I figure you would, since you enrolled here, and it’s kind of a prerequisite.’
‘That’s his idea of logic flow,’ one of the girls said – a cute African-American girl, wearing a knitted cap with earflaps and dangling yarn balls. She rolled her eyes. ‘No wonder he needs to crack books, because he sucks at critical path. I’m Kass, by the way.’
‘Hi, Kass. Um, thanks, Nick, that’s really nice of you, but I – I’m waiting for my housemate. We’ve got dinner on tonight. Maybe some other time?’
‘There’s a party later, is what Nick the Quick is failing to mention,’ one of the other boys said. He